I left my pen leaning against my notebook accidentally. It bled through, one page after another.
Live Cassette Loop Jam
From the YouTube account of the British/Italian duo Sonars
This rough-textured live ambient cassette loop jam noted the Sonars account on YouTube hitting the 1,000-follower milestone. It’s lush, with echoes of Gavin Bryars’ work, suggesting a sepia-toned version of a damaged old document, the aural equivalent of a photograph altered by time and the elements, changes both cultural and elemental. While listening, get lost in the nostalgia-tinged atmosphere. Also keep an eye (and ear) out the moment, just after the two-minute point, when the pitch, and attendant pace, are slowed markedly.
This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video originally posted on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07pBVC_hhnU). Sonars is a self-described electro-psych duo from the United Kingdom and Italy. More from them at [sonars.bandcamp.com](https://sonars.bandcamp.com/releases) and [instagram.com/sonarsmusic](https://www.instagram.com/sonarsmusic/).
Chris Herbert’s Sketches
Compiled from the cloud
The album *Nuvoloso* is named in Italian for the place where the sounds it contains were once housed. The word means cloudy. The place is SoundCloud. Or was. Chris Herbert, who released *Nuvoloso* late last month, has abandoned the platform, and here collects material he once hosted there, from the fully charged guitar explorations of “Charles Bullen” (seemingly named for the This Heat band member), to the steam-powered industrial music of “Neues Zodiak Free Arts Lab,” to the atmospheric fragments that charactertize the two opening tracks, “Macrolanguage” and “Live Architecture (Submerged/Factured),” as well as the elegant unease of “Untitled Tape Sketch.”
SoundCloud is often at its best for sketches, a way by which musicians can quickly check in with their listeners and collaborators. Herbert summarizes the scenario well in his accompanying note, explaining he used the site “as an audio diary for pieces that contained germinal ideas or material that was below the threshold for release but nevertheless indicated some kind of development: there’s a range and scope that is quite different in nature to my usual output.”
Album originally posted at [chrisherbert.bandcamp.com](https://chrisherbert.bandcamp.com/album/nuvoloso). More from Herbert, who is based in Birmingham, England, at [chrisherbert.net](http://chrisherbert.net/).
Current Favorites: Maraš, Buckley, Ristić, Hoedemaekers
Heavy rotation, lightly annotated
A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them. (This weekly feature was previously titled Current Listens. The name’s been updated for clarity’s sake.)
▰ Svetlana Maraš’ Ear I Am is an ever-shifting survey of antic sounds, industrial mechanics, and playful noises, all with a sense of rhythmic flow, even if that rhythm is, on occasion, purposefully quite subtle. The six-track album is a live recording, taped back in 2017 on the first of February at the Ear We Are Festival in Biel, Switzerland. She is based in Belgrade, Serbia.
▰ Linda Buckley’s “Loom” is a ferocious heave of mechanical trance state, until it isn’t, until the gear gnashing briefly disappears and all that’s left is the trance itself. And then the burners power up, and the machines go at it again. Thrilling. She is based in Dublin, Ireland.
▰ The 17th album in the great 20×20 series is another set of 20 tracks, each 20 seconds long. This latest, Do Not Go Gentle by Manja Ristić, alternates between degraded recordings of Dylan Thomas poems with snatches of string instruments, rattly percussion, and field recordings. She is based in Belgrade, Serbia.
▰ Rutger Hoedemaekers’ music for the TV series *No Man’s Land* is a beautiful expanse of tension-laden stillness. He’s probably best known for his work, with Hildur Guðnadóttir and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, on Trapped. I can’t find much of this excellent score in embeddable form on non-commercial streaming services, but it’s at music.youtube.com and spotify.com. (If those links fail, please let me know.) Also recommended is his The Last Berliner score, which I’ve had on repeat the past few months. Hoedemaekers, originally from the Netherlands, is based in Brussels, Belgium.
twitter.com/disquiet: Yeager, RIP + Jersey Noise
From the past week
I do this manually each week, collating the tweets I made at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet/) of which I want to keep track. For the most part, this means ones I initiated, not ones in which I directly responded to someone.
▰ There are key moments in the history of sound in the 20th century. Among the top, certainly, is Chuck Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. RIP to a legend ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/chuch-yeager-dies-at-97-air-force-f027e8960916cbd8094ab9f05ec2cbf2?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email)). Also, because thinking of sound in the 20th century invokes John Cage, it comes to mind that Cage has reportedly said that his development of 4’33” originated that same year. And yes, Glamorous Glennis is my new John Cage cover band.
▰ “Mystery of booming sound in New Jersey apparently solved” is my kinda clickbait. This one is like if [instructables.com](https://www.instructables.com/) had a weather-hacking category. The guilty party has “been firing off the sonically loud cone-shaped contraption — which blasts shock waves up to the sky — to break up cloud formations and scare away birds that nibble his grapes.” Full article at [nypost.com](https://nypost.com/2020/12/10/mystery-of-booming-sound-in-new-jersey-apparently-solved/). (thanks, Michael Upton).
▰ Still sorting out if Gibson, Doctorow, Older, or Newitz wrote our current reality. Upon reflection, I think my money is on Rita Indiana: “Orders for a Brazilian pig-feeding robot, which plays classical music while dispensing meals, soared this year as farmers strove to cut costs amid the COVID-19 pandemic.” Full article at [swineweb.com](https://www.swineweb.com/amid-pandemic-orders-soar-for-brazil-robot-that-feeds-pigs-playing-classical-music/).
▰ Nice. I was wondering what would come of Unsilent Night in the time of necessary social distancing. This is from the San Francisco event’s [Facebook group](https://www.facebook.com/events/3354829041295133/):
▰ Not surprisingly (#pandemic), the art school where I’ve taught my sound class (Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds: The Role of Sound in the Media Landscape) since 2012 had to nix it for 2021, along with a lot of other people’s courses. I was thinking about putting together an ad-hoc version of the course, but I’m gonna take this as a sign from the universe to focus on writing.
▰ We’ll see the end of Fonda Lee’s three-novel Jade series in 2021, and James S.A. Corey’s nine-novel Expanse. And now I’m up to date on both. I need to find a new ongoing series to dig into (besides Slough House, which I’m closing in on, and isn’t scifi).
▰ Apparently I was only partially viewing this film about a drummer with partial hearing:
